essay on the love of god

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The Love of God

Categories: Spirituality

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Words: 685 |

Published: Mar 13, 2024

Words: 685 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Bibliography:.

The Holy Bible, New International Version
Hinduism Today, "The Love of God in Hinduism" by Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami

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A Close Look at the Meaning of God's Love

Exploring the hebrew word khesed.

God loves you. In fact, God’s love is so amazing and enduring that there is an entire poem enthusiastically celebrating God’s love in the Bible . You’ll find it in Psalm 118. The poem begins and ends with this line:

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever.

The Hebrew word translated as “love” in Psalm 118 is khesed .

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his khesed endures forever.

Translating Khesed

Let’s take a closer look at the word khesed . You may have seen this word before spelled as “ chesed .” The problem with this spelling for English speakers is that we will likely pronounce the “ch” like the beginning of the word “cheese.” But in Hebrew, the sound is in the back of your throat like you are lightly coughing. That is why we spell it as “ khesed .” The “ kh ” is to remind you to do that little back of the throat tickle.

There is no good English translation for the word khesed , as we don’t have a word in English that encompasses all of the nuanced meaning of the Hebrew word. Khesed is a type of affection you have for someone, but it’s more than affection. It’s also a loyal commitment to be generous to that person for the long run. Can you think of an English word that captures that meaning? Bible translators have been trying to figure it out for generations. And you can see this by how many different translations have been done for this important Hebrew word.

The most famous use of khesed is in Exodus 34:6, where God calls himself “ compassionate , gracious , slow to anger , abounding in khesed and faithfulness.” Take a look at the different translations of khesed in this verse.

The Wycliff Bible (late 1300s) translates khesed as “steadfast love.” A modern translation, the ESV, uses this same phrase.

The King James Bible (early 1600s) translates khesed as “goodness.” The Geneva Bible, from the same time period, uses this same word.

Young’s Literal Translation (1862) translates khesed as “kindness.”

The World English Bible (1901) uses two words in their translation, “loving kindness.”

The NASB (1960s) translates khesed as “faithfulness.”

The NIV (1978) simply translates khesed as “love.”

Notice the different choices over generations: steadfast love, goodness, kindness, loving kindness, faithfulness, love. When we come across such a large discrepancy in translations, this tells us that the Hebrew word is unique and can’t quite be captured with any one word.

At BibleProject, we use our own translation of khesed , loyal love .

Yahweh, Yahweh, a God compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in loyal love and faithfulness.

Khesed is a kind of love you can depend on. When we long for love, what we are really longing for is khesed . Affection can come and go, and it doesn’t satisfy our innate need to be loved without condition. What we really want is a loyal affection not driven by strict or begrudging obligation but by deep compassion.

When we treat someone as a close friend or family member, doing what is necessary to ensure their well-being and the health of the relationship, we can call that an act of khesed . While the action may be an obligation or duty, khesed also refers to the emotional motivation of love that drives overabundant expressions of generosity and care.

Khesed assumes a pre-existing relationship and refers to actions that demonstrate loyalty to that relationship—to preserve and protect it and allow it to flourish. Khesed does not refer to any one specific type of action. Rather, khesed describes a posture in the relationship that can be expressed through many different acts.

In the Bible, we see humans show khesed to one another. Here are a few key examples. Jacob asks his sons to show khesed by promising to bury him in his homeland, which would require a pilgrimage out of Egypt (Genesis 47:29). Ruth , an immigrant, loses her husband and children but decides to stay committed to her mother-in-law, which is described as an act of khesed (Ruth 1:8; 3:10).

God's Loyal Love

While we see these acts of khesed throughout the Bible, the one who shows the most khesed is God . The Bible introduces us to a God who has a generous commitment to his human partners. Throughout the story of the Bible , humans continually show how faithless, selfish, and self-sabotaging they are, but the Bible makes clear how enduring God’s khesed is for us.

In the story of the Bible, God’s khesed is focused on one family, the family of Abraham. God pours his khesed out on them even when they don’t deserve it. He does this because he wants them to become the type of people who can take God’s khesed to all nations.

God shows khesed to Abraham’s family time and again. Jacob is a great example of God’s loyalty to this family. Jacob lies and cheats and steals, yet God upholds his covenant to Jacob. And Jacob recognizes how unworthy he is of that treatment.

I am unworthy of all the khesed and of all the faithfulness which you have shown to your servant.

The entire nation of Israel consistently rebels against God, despite his continued deliverance and forgiveness. Eventually, they are made to wander in the wilderness as a result of not trusting God, but God, in his khesed , is moved to rescue them.

In your khesed you will lead the people you have redeemed. In your strength you will guide them to your holy dwelling.

Please forgive the guilt of this people in accordance with the greatness of your khesed , just as you also have forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now.

Despite their rebellion God forgives them, which is called an act of khesed . Later, the entire nation of Israel rebels against God again, and they are exiled to Babylon. During these dark times, Israel’s prophets look at God’s past acts of khesed as the basis for hope of future khesed and their rescue from exile.

Awake, Lord! Why do you sleep? Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever. Why do you hide your face And forget our misery and oppression? We are brought down to the dust; Our bodies cling to the ground. Rise up and help us; Rescue us because of your unfailing khesed .

God continues to show abundant khesed to Israel because through them, he will show his khesed to all the nations. This leads us to Jesus. He came to fulfill God’s relationship with Israel by being the faithful human who lives every day in the security of God’s khesed and succeeds in showing khesed back to God. Jesus is the embodiment of God’s khesed . God’s relentless, loyal love arrives in Jesus, and his affection for us drives him to give us the ultimate act of loyal love in his life, death, and resurrection.

BibleProject is a nonprofit ed-tech organization and animation studio that produces 100% free Bible videos, podcasts, articles, classes, and educational Bible resources to help make the biblical story accessible to everyone, everywhere.

10 Things You Should Know about the Love of God

This article is part of the 10 Things You Should Know series.

1. God’s love is incomprehensible.

No human mind can comprehend God. We cannot define God. We cannot provide a comprehensive account of who he is. He "dwells in unapproachable light" (1 Tim. 6:16). If God is incomprehensible, then so is his love. While we may and must speak truthfully about his love, we can never fathom it, because it is divine love, as different from our love as his being is different from our being.

2. God’s love can be known.

We cannot define God in the sense of delimiting exhaustively who he is, but we can nonetheless describe him truthfully. We can do so because he has made himself known to us in his Word and he opens our eyes to that Word by his Spirit. How is that possible, given the divine difference? It is possible because God makes himself known to us in creaturely reality. He takes up the things he has made and uses them to describe himself to us. Thus he is a lion, a rock, fire, even moth and dry rot (look it up!).

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3. God is known by analogy.

When God uses created things like lions to speak about himself in the Bible he is speaking analogically. This means that the things he uses to describe himself are neither identical with him, nor utterly different from him. He is a rock, for example, not because he is made of stone. When he says "rock" of himself, we are not to map all the rockiness of a rock onto him point-for-point. But nor are we to think that he is he entirely unrocky, discontinuous in every way with rocks. When he says that he is a rock he means some of what we mean when we say that a rock is a rock: he is not made of stone, but he is solid and reliable. How is it possible for created things to image God for us like this? It is possible precisely because he created them. It is as if his fingerprints are left on the things he has made, so that each of them contains a pale reflection of some of his divine attributes. Our fallen minds cannot piece together a picture of God from what he has made—indeed we suppress his natural revelation—but in his inspired Word he himself can use those things to describe himself, and then he can illuminate our minds to understand and believe those descriptions. This all applies to God’s love: when we read "God is love" we know something of what love is from what he has made, but his love is never to be identified point-for-point with any created love that we already know.

4. The pictures of God in the Bible regulate themselves, including pictures of his love.

A pressing question then arises: how do we know which aspects of each picture that God draws of himself we are to apply to him and which we are not? How do we know that we are not to infer that his love might ebb and flow as human love can, even that it might fail? This may seem obvious to us, but that is only because we have to some extent already learned how to read the Bible properly. What, when we stop and think about it, is the reason that we do not infer this? The reason is that other ways in which God describes himself prevent us doing so—for example, his repeated self-description as a covenant-keeping God who makes solemn oaths to his people. The Bible is a self-interpreting book: what it says in one part shows us how we are to read another part. Its many pictures of God form a self-interpreting mesh of images. And that includes its pictures of his love.

5. We quickly leap to the wrong conclusions about God’s love.

We are often less alert to the ways in which the love language is to be interpreted in the light of God’s other descriptions of himself. This comes out very clearly when someone says something like, "If I were a God of love then I . . . " The reasoning that follows is usually untethered from God’s wider portrayal of himself in Scripture. When we do this God becomes in effect just a massive projection of our own selves, a shadow cast onto a screen behind us with all of our own features magnified and exaggerated. Whereas it may be immediately obvious to us that God will not decide to stop loving us, for some reason it is less obvious that his love is different from our love in other ways, such as in being self-sufficient, sovereign, unchanging, all-knowing, just, and passionless (yes, rightly understood).

If God is incomprehensible, then so is his love.

6. God’s love must be "read" within the rest of what Scripture teaches about his divine attributes.

We are not free to pick up the ball of "God is love" and run with it wherever we will. The statement must remain tethered within its immediate context in 1 John 4, within the broader context of John’s writings, and within the ultimate context of God’s entire self-description in Scripture. The local context immediately reminds us (in verse 10) of the connection between love and propitiation, which requires that we understand God’s love alongside his justice and wrath. The ultimate context of Scripture will bring alongside his love all of the other attributes of God. Together they will form a self-regulating mesh of meaning.

7. God’s love must be "read" especially within what Scripture teaches about his triune life.

Further, the wider context in John’s writings will repeatedly connect the love of God to his triune life. John delights to write of the Father’s love for the Son and the Son’s love for the Father. He even records the Lord Jesus saying that the Father loves him because he lays down his life (John 10:17). Love is not unique for being a trinitarian attribute: all the attributes of God are the attributes of the one God who is three persons, but we must never miss the trinitarian character of the love of God.

8. Reading God’s love in its wider context keeps us from error.

Love is perhaps the most obvious attribute for consideration from a trinitarian perspective, but we more readily observe that than grasp the theological consequences of it. What a difference it will make if, for example, we recall that the love of God is rooted in the Father’s love for his Son and his resulting will to see the Son honored (John 5:22–23). Then we will not infer from "God is love" that he easily overlooks sin, because we will grasp that Christ-dishonoring sin is itself an offense against the very heart of God’s love. From God’s love for his Son will follow his wrath against sinners. It is only when we read the love of God like this that we will be prevented from reaching false conclusions from it by making our own natural minds the context in which we interpret it.

His Love Endures Forever

Garry j. williams.

Revealing how we often confuse God’s love with human love, this book looks to the Bible to explain how and what God loves—helping readers understand that God is fundamentally a God of love.

9. Understanding the different manner of God’s love helps us to see its immeasurable magnitude .

The consideration of the love of God in its proper biblical contexts is not an exercise in abstraction of interest only to obscurantist systematic theologians. It may be easier just to think "God is love" and to fill that statement with whatever our human minds suggest. Certainly it requires less mental effort just to let our own minds generate our theology, rather than to subject them to the disciplined study of God’s self-revelation in Scripture. But at the end of the day a god who is little more than a projection of my own mind can never satisfy me. Worshipping such a god would be like being locked in a room with only myself as company, a kind of theological solitary confinement, a terrible narcissistic solipsism, and ultimately a form of self-worshipping idolatry akin in some ways to hell itself. There is no satisfaction on this road, only bitter disappointment. It is meditation on the authoritative self-revelation of God in its fullness that will bring rest for our souls, the rest of finding in him one who infinitely exceeds our own puny finitude, one whose delights can never be exhausted.

10. God’s love truly perceived always draws out from us a response of love.

The contemplation of divine love in its biblical fullness is never something that ends in itself. Our rest in God never finds its fulfillment in ourselves but always leads us out of ourselves toward him and toward others. The love of God is to be lived as well as learned. The love of God for us begets love in us for him and for others. The true Word of love that we have in the Bible, if we have it truly, will abide in us, and will not return empty as, by miracles of grace, we make glancing reflections of the immeasurable love of God visible to others in our own lives.

Garry Williams (DPhil, Oxford University) serves as the director of the John Owen Centre for Theological Study at London Theological Seminary in the United Kingdom, which provides theological teaching for pastors after their initial training. He is also a visiting professor of historical theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Garry and his wife, Fiona, have four children.